When was your house built? --- part 2

 

In an earlier blog post, I discussed construction materials for the houses that were built in St Leonard’s in the years around Queen Victoria’s accession in 1837.  Bricks were coming into widespread use, with new brickworks opening in the city.  Since then, I have been able to look at the original deeds for a local house built in 1830-31 and to look at some of its exposed walls.  Underneath the stucco on the lower floors, there are stone walls, using blocks from the Heavitree quarries.  Yes, brick has been used, but not for load-bearing walls --- bricks for dividing rooms and bricks for the upper floors where the walls do not carry any load (the roof goes on the stone).  So brick houses locally arrived later --- probably when the builders knew that they could rely on the strength of the bricks.

Incidentally, the map of cases of cholera in the outbreak of that disease in 1832-34 shows where there were houses in this neighbourhood at that time; one death is noted in St Leonard’s Road, and many in both Holloway Street and Magdalen Street.  The scourge of cholera was not confined to the slums of the city.